Dirty Harry 10 - The Blood of Strangers (2 page)

The Small Man noted that the second cop was too bored or else too tired to pay close attention to what was happening. The Small Man was very good at what he did. He had such an air of serenity about him that apprehension was the last thing a person would feel in his presence.

“I just wanted to explain something about this registration you have . . .”

“Oh, and what’s that?”

He pointed to it, causing the cop to look down. At that moment, in one quick motion, he raised the .45 and without hesitation discharged it.

There wasn’t much noise because of the silencer. The cop lurched forward in his seat, and then sagged to the right so he fell across his partner. His brains were scattered across the back of the seat. The Small Man gave his partner no opportunity to react and shot him squarely in the face.

The face seemed to fall away. An eye disintegrated. But the cop was not dead. The Small Man fired a second time, completing the execution.

Retrieving the license and registration, he abandoned the squad car just as the dispatcher was announcing that the Chevy in question was stolen. The men believed to have taken it were “armed and extremely dangerous.”

“Announcing Pan American Flight 908, for Honolulu and Tokyo, scheduled to depart at 11:45, now receiving passengers at Gate Twelve. Please have your passports and boarding passes ready for inspection. That’s Pan American Flight 908, for Honolulu and Tokyo, scheduled to depart at . . .”

Several tourists as well as a scattering of somberly dressed Japanese businessmen began gathering their paraphernalia, their cameras and carry-on luggage, in response to the announcement which had given way to Muzak.

They only partially accounted for the large number of people assembled in the waiting area for departure to Anchorage, Sydney, Bangkok, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Peking. Among them were tourist groups who looked to their leaders for guidance as they contemplated vast and exhausting journeys to faraway destinations.

The digital clocks showed that it was 11:22:40.

A young married couple had taken a place on a bench located not far from the middle of the terminal. They had been married by a justice of the peace in Phoenix, Arizona three days before and were on a honeymoon trip that would take them first to Hong Kong. They were looking forward to a week of sightseeing and bargain hunting and perhaps even some casino gambling in nearby Macao.

The woman wasn’t pretty but she was clearly the sort that a man would feel safe in bringing home to his family. “I feel that we’ve been running nonstop since Saturday,” she said, and she did look tired. “It’ll be nice when we can settle into our hotel and not have to move anymore.”

To take the pressure off her feet, she slipped off her pumps. Swinging her left leg back and forth, her heel hit a bag of some kind underneath the seat.

Puzzled, she glanced down and saw a gray satchel. “Is that yours, Fred?”

Fred was preoccupied, admiring the passage of a delectable young thing across the floor. “What was that, dear?”

“This isn’t yours, is it?”

She pulled out the satchel so that he could get a better glimpse of it.

The digital clocks indicated that it was now 11:24:03.

Fred shook his head. “That old thing, are you kidding?”

The woman glanced around but there was no one anywhere in the vicinity who looked like they might own it. “Maybe we should take it to the claims department, somebody might have forgotten it.”

“I don’t know, it’s probably better to leave it where it is.”

At that instant there was a chime, then a woman’s mellifluous voice: “Announcing TWA Flight 760 to Hong Kong via Honolulu, Taipei and Manila, now receiving passengers at Gate Eight. Please have your boarding passes and passports ready. TWA Flight 760 . . .”

“That’s us, honey,” Fred said, stooping down to gather up his checkered Vuitton case.

“Thank God, at last,” his wife sighed, although in fact, the flight was right on time. It was exactly 11:25:30.

“Have you got everything?”

Fred was impatient, being the sort who believes that a delay of a minute is disastrous.

“I think so.”

The woman worried her feet back into her pink pumps.

“Got the health certificates?”

“Yes, they’re right here.” She didn’t like him checking up on every little thing. What kind of marriage was this going to be? she wondered. She held them up for him to see. He nodded, apparently satisfied. It was now 11:26:00.

Which was when the ingenious device in the satchel, triggered by a simple alarm clock, was set to go off.

The first thing it did as it detonated was to rip through the vinyl bench, sending bits and pieces flying to all ends of the terminal. The second thing it did was to blow apart the newly married couple and their luggage, sending bits and pieces of them flying to all ends of the terminal. And that was only the beginning . . .

C H A P T E R
O n e

T
he smoke was slow to clear from the interior of the terminal even though firemen had spent close to two hours extinguishing the blaze. Yet already the extent of the damage was becoming obvious to the various investigators who’d hastened to the scene of the blast.

Half the ceiling had come crashing down and a jagged gaping hole left in its place revealed an incongruously blue sky. The vinyl benches blown apart were now globular heaps, pulverized into such weird shapes that they resembled the sort of sculpture one would expect to find in the Museum of Art on McAllister Street. Of the row of airline counters, nothing was left intact; their metal was twisted and torn apart, and the signs that had proclaimed their identities dangled mockingly over the rubble. In the middle of the floor was a vast crater that looked like it might, at any moment, swallow up whatever was left whole in the wreckage.

But the physical damage was minor compared with the destruction of human life for those who were unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity of the bomb when it exploded. The total number of casualties was not yet known; this was because several of the bodies had been so dismembered that barring a forensic analysis, no one was able to say just how many dead there were. Even hours after the explosion, investigators were still finding severed arms, legs, and feet—and in one instance, the head of a middle-aged man whose neck had been cauterized by the intensity of the heat—that had landed far from where their owners had been standing.

About the floors and the walls, were large swaths of dried blood that were easily distinguished against the charred backdrop.

It was difficult to linger for long inside the bombed-out terminal. Not only was there a problem with the smoke but there was also the noxiously sweet odor of death, the mixture of blood and cooked flesh.

Sirens continued to scream in the distance. From elsewhere in the airport, which had been completely evacuated, dogs could be heard barking. No further chances were being taken. Several officers from the bomb squad were searching the complex for additional devices. Though no one had ever understood what it was about explosives that aroused a dog’s olfactory nerves no one questioned the ability of such a trained animal to ferret them out. In this case however, they were just a little too late.

There was no mistaking Timothy McFadden Connelly. He had all the outward markings of an FBI agent. Possibly, there was an FBI boutique somewhere that outfitted each agent with the same brand trenchcoats, shades, shoes, and wristwatches. In all likelihood, it was located next door to the barber shop where they all received the same haircuts. He was a strapping man who carried himself so erectly that it strained the back just to look at him.

More by virtue of his posture than his height, he seemed to tower over Lieutenant Bressler. Bressler had an unhappy look on his face. And why shouldn’t he? He didn’t want any part of this mess. Only last night, he’d been awakened by a call that two of his men had been slain on the shoulder of Route 101 by unknown assailants who were presumed to have stolen a ’73 green Chevrolet. The car had been found abandoned. Where the assailants had gone was anyone’s guess.

But the loss of two cops, while grievous, paled by comparison to this catastrophe. It was certainly one of the worst in the city’s history. The total so far: ten dead, thirty-six injured, eight seriously. And it was entirely conceivable the toll would double before the day was over.

Somebody else should be handling this, thought Bressler. But it was summer and the Commissioner and several of his immediate superiors were in Washington attending a police officers convention. Washington, he thought ruefully, they should be here where crime was going on, not in the nation’s capital talking about it.

If Bressler looked mournful, Connelly evinced no emotion at all. Neither the grisly aspect of his surroundings, nor the noxious odors seemed to bother him.

“This is going to get a lot bigger,” Connelly said quite unexpectedly. “It’ll get bigger, then it’ll get out of hand.”

“And that doesn’t disturb you?”

“Sure it disturbs me, sure it does. But I am not certain there’s much we can do about it.”

“You don’t sound optimistic.” Bressler didn’t have much faith in the FBI. In this instance, however, he wouldn’t mind if the agency got the credit. Just so long as the burden of this case was lifted from him.

“I’m not. I’ve handled similar things before. The Omega people, the FALN, the Weathermen in the Sixties . . . I can spot professionals. The only thing that surprises me is that we haven’t gotten any calls yet claiming responsibility. With something like this you generally find half a dozen organizations—some you figure are made up on the spur of the moment—saying that the bomb was theirs and if you don’t look out, they’ll strike again.”

“There’ll be calls,” Bressler said. “You wait and see.”

“I suppose so. They might not be to your people though. In my experience, these terrorists prefer to work the media. The Simbionese Liberation Front—the one that inducted Patty Hearst—they knew how to play the media. They get better at it all the time. So the calls might be coming into your newspapers, your t.v. stations especially.”

“That reminds me, what do we tell the press? They’re outside clamoring for news.”

Connelly’s view was that one should say as little to the press as possible. “In this case that shouldn’t be hard. What do you know about this bombing?”

Bressler conceded that it wasn’t much.

“So there’s your answer.”

Bressler would ordinarily have relied on the official police department spokesman. But this was not the sort of thing that could be left to a spokesman.

Corralled into a roped-off area established by the police, the representatives of the media were dismayed that so far they’d been denied access to the site of the blast. Moreover, the official news bulletins had been both stale and evasive. If these reporters were not placated soon, they were liable to start a revolt of their own.

While the majority of the reporters and photographers seemed unwilling to defy the police, there was one who had absolutely no intention of waiting any longer.

Suddenly, the rope was down and a woman, followed by a soundman and a cameraman, was striding resolutely toward the devastated terminal.

The woman was very good looking and wearing a skirt that slit provocatively along its bias. She was something of a local celebrity too, having anchored the evening news for KCVO-TV, on and off for the last three years. The officer who attempted to stop her, called to her by name, which was something he couldn’t have done with any of the other restless members of the press gathered in front of him.

“Miss Winston, please, you’re not allowed beyond this point!”

If Ellie Winston heard him, and she probably did, it was clear that she was not about to obey him.

There was only one other officer assigned to keeping the newspeople quarantined and he rushed toward her. How he intended to block her and the pair of men behind her was not immediately apparent. In any case, it was too late.

Seeing that Ellie had broken free, the others followed, flailing their cameras and cassette recorders as though they were weapons. They looked like settlers starting out on the Oklahoma land rush.

Connelly, with Bressler at his side, was just emerging from the terminal when the army of reporters came marching down on them.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” Bressler muttered. “I gave orders that this wasn’t supposed to happen.”

Connelly was his usual imperturbable self. “Handle it,” he said and slipped away, intent on avoiding any embarrassing questions.

Now additional officers moved to halt the invasion, forming a protective ring about the terminal. But Ellie Winston kept right on going.

“Miss Winston, please,” one of them pleaded. “We can’t let anyone in there until the preliminary investigation is completed.”

As he spoke, he did not realize that the cameras had turned on him and were in the process of filming. When he looked up into the glare of their lights, his words grew halting and suddenly he fell silent altogether. Ellie thrust a microphone toward him.

“Is there anything else you care to add?”

“Not my job,” he mumbled and retreated from the camera’s intimidating eye.

So Ellie searched for another victim and found him in the person of Lieutenant Bressler. Bressler glanced uneasily about, hoping for relief, but there was no help in sight. He had to do this one on his own.

“Lieutenant, do you have any idea who might be responsible for this carnage?”

“Miss Winston, I am prepared to make a statement to the press. I am not prepared to take individual questions.”

“Is the police department taking any special measures to make certain something like this does not happen again?” Ellie found that by ignoring hostile responses she was often able to get her point across—if not to the interviewee at least to her audience.

“Miss Winston . . .” Bressler’s voice betrayed his exhaustion.

Others were now shouting out their questions and Bressler turned to confront them. As he did so, Ellie took advantage of his distraction and slipped behind the police barricade, which consisted only of a few hastily positioned wooden props. The sound and camera men followed in her footsteps.